Welcome to our 53rd newsletter on Star Atlas! This is a weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, that is focused entirely on Star Atlas. Here we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits that were dropped by the team throughout the past week.
This week’s newsletter finds you one day later than usual, as we felt we could not publish a version that would not include yesterday’s massive reveal. It’s been an exciting few days, with the team presenting both a demo of their upcoming Showroom R2 (pre-release 2) on Friday (the 4th) and Michael (CEO) giving a 20+ minute keynote on Monday (the 7th).
As a result, this has become quite an information-heavy issue. So, please sit down, grab a drink and enjoy the reveals!
Community Meetups
There have been some pretty big community meetups going on last week, with the Quimera guild hosting their first-ever Star Atlas conference in Madrid, Spain. More than 60 people attended this community-organized event, some of whom flew in from as far as Mexico. As a cherry on top, there was a special appearance by Santi (Community Director) and remote congratulations from the team.
Next to that, while in Lisbon (Portugal), about 18 community members gathered to meet each other and the team (11 of them!) for the first time! It was a lovely evening where folks were enjoying each other’s company, casual conversation, a few beers, and dinner together!
Solana Games Day
On November 4th, the team presented a 45-minute showcase of their upcoming Volant Studio Showroom R2 during the Solana Games Day. It’s safe to say that the team blew people away with what they were showing. The reactions from the audience and streamers were overwhelmingly positive.
During the last Townhall, Michael first announced that (PvE) dogfighting would come to R2, and less than a week later they demoed this mode with the help of a group of e-sports gamers.
There are several tweets worth checking out if you want to see some footage shot during the day!
Note: See the previous newsletter for more information on what R2 will bring besides these game modes.
First look at Showroom R2 https://t.co/2S3xG8Gy6D
Breakpoint Keynote
The demo was truly amazing, but that was not all that the team had prepared. On Monday November 7th, Michael presented a 24-minute keynote that you can watch in its entirety below:
Michael kicked off by stating that there were two key things that he wanted to demonstrate with his presentation:
- That Star Atlas truly is the next generation of gaming; not just in Web3, but across the entire games industry
- That the concept of Star Atlas is significantly larger than that of “just” a videogame; With its open architecture and permissionless on-chain game design, the team is building a gaming ecosystem that others can build upon
He followed up on that by sharing that ATMTA is focusing its efforts primarily on 3 core verticals of business: Gaming Experiences, Infrastructure & Architecture, and a Marketplace.
Fuzzy Lemur
Talking about the infrastructure part, Michael announced Fuzzy Lemur, a [Solana] Blockchain Indexing Service built by the team, allowing them to bypass RPC nodes and get their data directly from the source.
Early analysis shows that they are able to receive state changes from the validators in as little as 16ms, with median speeds being 215ms, making it the fastest indexer in the industry at this point in time.
Getting these interactions as fast as possible is important as the team plans to use the blockchain as their “game server(s)”.
✨Today was an amazing day…but it was only the beginning!✨
Join us this Monday, Nov 7, at @SolanaConf Breakpoint for a special keynote from our CEO and co-founder @at_mwagner!🪐
📡Stay tuned for the livestream link! 🛰
#BUIDL #WeAreStarAtlas #SolanaBreakpoint https://t.co/ul5OUoNkR2
Michael went into a great many other topics, which we’ll cover below!
Automata is a gaming company, but our destination is the open metaverse - Michael during Breakpoint 22
UE5: New Roadmap
Perhaps the biggest news on Monday was the unveiling of the full, multi-year roadmap for the Unreal Engine 5 game. To bring more structure to these releases, the team identified two different phases: a pre-season release phase and a seasonal release phase.
Below are the four releases planned for the pre-season phase:
- Showroom environment
- Flight / Race, Multiplayer Instances
- Crafting building materials, Ship cargo & hauling
- ECOS attack, Looting & skins
The first pre-release (R1) was launched during the last 426Live event, and the next step will be the release of the R2 release that was demoed last week.
There will be 2 more pre-season releases coming next year, after which the team will flag that phase as completed, switching to a seasonal release schedule instead.
The Warp Gate Project
Starting with R3, the Showroom map will be greatly expanded and the players will have to work together to create the very first megastructure project within Star Atlas. Everyone will work collaboratively to collect materials and resources from mining facilities and contribute these to the creation of a warp gate. Once completed, this gate will take players out of the Showroom into the wider Star Atlas universe!
UE5: Seasons
Season 0
After the gate has been completed, players will enter Season 0 and the pre-release cycle will have come to an end.
Season 0 will introduce a full game loop around combat racing. It will also mark a major milestone for Star Atlas, leading them to name this release Star Atlas: Alive.
Season 0 - Combat Racing
- Racing career
- Fighter career
- SAGE (Star Atlas: Golden Era, see below)
Season 1-8
Moving forward after the launch of Season 0, the team will release new content in a seasonal format going forward, until they’ve managed to complete their vision for Star Atlas v1. Every season will consist of some specialization of certain gameplay mechanics wherein they enhance one (or more) of the professions in the game.
Note that these seasons are going to take many years to roll out, with Michaels stating that they presently still expect to need 5 - 7 years to finish this roadmap.
The seasons will bring the following to the Star Atlas UE5 experience:
Season 1 - Ship Mining
- Space miner career
- Crew
- ONI central space station
- Space habitats
Season 2 - Game Hunting
- FPS combat
- Game hunter career
- Mounting
Season 3 - Bounty Hunting
- Bounty hunting
- USTUR central station
Season 4 - Smuggle & Freight
- Smuggling career
- Freight career
- Player space station creation
Season 5 - Land mining & Crafting
- Mining outposts
- Manufacturing career
- MUD central space station
Season 6 - Exploration & Transport
- Exploration
- Passenger transport
- Real-Time Strategy: Fleet & crew command
- Homeworld planets
Season 7 - Repair & Salvage
- Repair career
- Salvage career
- All ships flight ready
Season 8 - Rescue, Refuel & Politics
- Rescue career
- Refueler career
- Politician career
- Full decentralized
- Star Atlas 1.0
UE5: Pipeline Footage
During the keynote on Monday, Michael showed a 4-minute video showing off content from the various content pipelines the team set up. You can check this video out below:
SCREAM aka SA:GE
Besides some new screenshots of the current state of affairs, not much was shared on SCREAM at Breakpoint. However, the team did reveal the official name for Project SCREAM on stage on Monday. Henceforth SCREAM will be called Star Atlas: Golden Era. The team’s Medium article describes it as follows:
[…] a top-down, webGL-based, grand strategy game with some of the same game loops that will take place in later seasons of Star Atlas
On stage, Michael added that one of the reasons for calling this Golden Era is because it unlocks the next generation of game economics across the Star Atlas ecosystem.
Graphic Novel
Michael officially launched the Star Atlas Graphic Novel: CORE during his Breakpoint address. Over the course of 18 months, a new issue (chapter) will be released on every first Wednesday of the month, and it will be freely available across all of the major e-reader apps (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc).
The comic is set just before the Convergence War and tells the story of how a select group of individuals can change the entire course of history.
It’s a tale of heroism, heartbreak, and epic adventure from a team of award-winning creatives that will be released later this year.
The first issue is now available for everyone to read!
Our brand-new Graphic Novel, #StarAtlasCORE, is officially out! ✨
Now, we’re excited to announce that a free version of Ep. 1 is available on @AppleBooks in over 50 countries across the world! 🌐
Dive into the newest Star Atlas Lore at the link below: https://t.co/QqQ2TSHOEL https://t.co/zDxHSF6o5X
NFT Collection
If you are a collector, or you’d like to get your hands on a physical book, then you can also choose to buy a commemorative NFT for $20 (in SOL).
There are two of these NFTs, one is being sold on the Galactic Marketplace, and the other is sold via Magic Eden. Both marketplaces offer a unique collectible cover!
If you own 18 consecutive exclusive covers (from either GM or ME), you will have the option to redeem them (possibly through burning) for a physical, hard-bound copy of the complete Graphic Novel.
There are also some other benefits to buying these limited edition NFTs: You will get early access to the monthly series and on top of that, you will get expanded content.
But there is more!
Treasure Hunt
Readers can also hunt for clues in every issue, that collectively will unlock a mystery and a prize when the last issue has been released! However, these secret messages are only available to those who buy the exclusive covers.
Being one of the first explorers to crack the Arc Cypher may earn you:
- The complete Digital Edition of CORE
- A meeting with the writing team
- A Ship skin based on the graphic novel
- Extra exclusive content
Faction Trivia Competition
The Community team is organizing a new competition for the community, called Faction Trivia. This event will span 3 rounds over three weeks, with the rounds taking place on November 11th, 18th, and 25th in the Star Atlas Discord voice chat.
During each of these rounds, questions will be asked, with points going to each faction that manages to answer a question correctly first.
At the end of the 3 weeks, the faction with the most points will win.
Prizes
Each correctly answered question will yield the person answering one raffle ticket. The community members of the winning faction will see their raffle tickets double. The prizes that will be raffled out have not yet been announced.
One more special prize will go to the top scorer of the winning faction. They will get a special behind-the-scenes look at the Star Atlas [team’s Discord] server.